February 20, 2013, New Haven, CT - Svante Pääbo, PhD, director of the Department of Genetics at the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, is the recipient of the 2013
Genetics Prize of The Gruber Foundation. Pääbo is being honored with this prestigious international
award for his pioneering research in the field of evolutionary genetics. He is considered the founder of
molecular paleontology, the application of genetics to the study of prehistoric life.

The award will be presented to Pääbo on April 16 at the International Congress of Genetics conference
in Singapore, where he will also deliver a lecture entitled "Archaic Genomics."

"Svante Pääbo's work shows basic science at its best. He was driven by an obvious passion to use DNA
technology to unlock the past. He overcame seemingly insuperable technical obstacles. And he opened
new vistas on a question we all care about, 'Where do we come from?' This is a wonderful award," said
Maynard Olson, a member of the selection advisory board and 2007 laureate of the Gruber Genetics
Prize.

Pääbo, 57, started experimenting with extracting DNA from ancient human remains in the early 1980s
while completing his PhD program in molecular immunology at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, his
native country. His first major finding—the demonstration that DNA was preserved in a 2,400-year-old
mummy of an infant boy—was published as the cover story in Nature in 1985. In the ensuing two-and-a-
half decades—at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Munich and, since 1997, at
the Max Planck Institute— Pääbo has played a leading role in developing the technology that has made
it possible to isolate and sequence ancient DNA.

In 1997, Pääbo announced the successful sequencing of mitochondrial Neandertal DNA—a watershed in
evolutionary genetics. In addition to proving that the DNA could be successfully extracted and
sequenced from a 40,000-year-old fossil, the sequencing showed that Neandertals and humans were
distinctly different groups. Over the next decade, with the help of new gene-sequencing technology,
Pääbo led efforts to sequence Neandertal’s nuclear DNA. In 2010, he and his colleagues at the Max
Planck Institute published the draft sequence of that genome, along with the startling finding that
Neandertals have contributed up to 4 percent of the genetic material in modern humans. That same
year, Pääbo and his team reported a second remarkable finding: A DNA analysis of a finger bone found
in 2008 in a Siberian cave showed that it had belonged to a previously unknown form of hominins. It was
the first time an extinct hominin group had been identified by genetic analysis alone.

Pääbo is also recognized as one of the world’s leaders in human molecular evolution. He has, for
example, played a critical role in defining the genetic relationship between humans and great ape
populations. In addition, he has identified and studied the function of genes critically important in the
evolution of the human species, such as FOXP2, which is associated with language development. In
2008, Pääbo reported that Neandertals had an identical FOXP2 gene, which raised the tantalizing
possibility that they may have had some language capabilities.

"Pääbo's bold and exciting research has changed the way we understand human evolution and is
providing insight into genes that are critical in the evolution of the human species," said Huda Zoghbi,
chair of the Selection Advisory Board and the 2011 laureate of the Gruber Neuroscience Prize.

Additional Information

In addition to the cash award, the recipient will receive a gold laureate pin and a citation that reads:

The Gruber Foundation proudly presents the 2013 Genetics Prize to Svante Pääbo for pioneering the
analysis of ancient DNA.

Prior to Dr. Pääbo's research, scientists vacillated between defeatist and overly exuberant views of the
feasibility of sequencing DNA older than a few hundred years. Through painstaking development of new
methods for handling, extracting DNA from, and sequencing ancient samples, Dr. Pääbo determined
whole-genome sequences from fossils as old as 80,000 years.

The ancient DNAs analyzed included the genomes of Neandertal and Denisova, extinct relatives of
contemporary humans. Dr. Pääbo's studies established that although early humans and these extinct
relatives were contemporary inhabitants of Europe and Asia, they last shared a common ancestor
hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Strikingly, Dr. Pääbo's research demonstrated that certain segments derived from Neandertal and
Denisovan genomes are found in modern humans, providing evidence of early interbreeding of these
populations. His studies were a technological tour de force, opened new windows into the distant past,
and provided fundamental insights into our origins.

By agreement made in the spring of 2011 The Gruber Foundation has now been established at Yale
University.

The Gruber International Prize Program honors individuals in the fields of Cosmology, Genetics and
Neuroscience, whose groundbreaking work provides new models that inspire and enable fundamental
shifts in knowledge and culture. The Selection Advisory Boards choose individuals whose contributions
in their respective fields advance our knowledge and potentially have a profound impact on our lives.

The Genetics Prize is presented to a leading scientist, or up to three, in recognition of groundbreaking
contributions to any realm of genetics research.